


Let's Not Be Rational About This

by BewareTheIdesOfMarch



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, I can't take things seriously, SO SORRY, weird phobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BewareTheIdesOfMarch/pseuds/BewareTheIdesOfMarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire's life sucks and I fail to take things seriously.  Whoops, I wrote a thing about ducks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Not Be Rational About This

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this post: http://the-ineffable-pangolin.tumblr.com/post/70943147895/excessively-english-little-b and accidentally...wrote it? I am so sorry.

Grantaire’s mother had always assured him that there was nothing wrong with being afraid.  It didn’t matter what he was afraid of, just how he faced it.

_“Don’t let it control you, you can be stronger than your fear.“_   She’d smile and spout her life lessons, lessons that went over the head the seven year-old.  _“As long as you try I’ll always be proud of you.”_

_Sorry Mom, looks like you’re not going to be proud of me after all._ Grantaire broke into a jog as he was skirting around the park.  The park.  _The park_.  If he’d known about the park he would never have chosen the apartment he lived in now.  That damned park was going to be the death of him.

Oh sure, he’d liked it well enough the first time he’d discovered it.  It made the walk between his place and Feuilly’s place a helluva lot shorter, and he had to admit that the landscaper had been top notch.  Bees buzzed pleasantly around flowers, there were shady spots with benches that were perfect for sitting and reading, and there was even one part of it that had been sectioned off for children.  Gavroche climbed the trees and Jehan composed limericks about passersby.  Everything had been peaceful for a month or so.

And then Grantaire had found out about the beast.

He’d been minding his own business, just trying to get back to his place after his fencing class when that _thing_ had mindlessly attacked him.  He’d had to run for his life to escape it.  In his terror, he had gotten lost in the park and just when he thought his plight couldn’t get any worse he’d discovered the beast’s kin.  He must have looked ridiculous to anyone else in the place.  He was a full-grown man, sprinting for all he was worth for the gate.  It was worth it though; he made it back to his apartment with only a rip in his sweatshirt from where it had caught on the fence.

He mourned his hoodie and swore never to step foot in the park again.  He would not, not with that thing around.

That decision had made his life much more difficult.  He was almost always late to fencing, he had to invent excuses to avoid taking Gavroche to the park, and even Feuilly commented on the decrease in frequency of his visits.  Most of all, he found himself becoming chronically late for everything because of the need to circumnavigate the place.

If he was going to be honest with himself (which he wasn’t) it was a little silly.  The rational part of him brain was telling him that he was being stupid.  _You’re a coward R, you’re a baby, you’re a chicken, you’re a scaredy-cat._

_Hell yeah I’m a coward,_ said the part of him that was scared stiff.  _Didn’t you see the size of that thing?  There’s no way in hell I’m risking that._

_That’s a good point,_ concurred the rational part.  _But if we’re going to do it this way we’d better pick up the pace a little._

He quickened his pace, hoping that Courfeyrac hadn’t started the movie yet.  He might not be the world’s biggest fan of Legally Blonde, but he was definitely an avid watcher of Enjolras’ varying facial expressions.  Enjolras loved Elle Woods and he got caught up in her story no matter how many times they watched the movie.  It would be a crime if Grantaire missed even the title sequence.

He entered Courfeyrac’s cluttered apartment just in time to see the face of Daffy Duck fill up the screen as the sound of comical basketball playing filled the living room.  That asshole had lied, they weren’t watching Legally Blonde, this was Space Jam.  Grantaire did an about-face and slammed the door behind him.  He had _not_ just run the last block to put up with this shit.  He stomped back down the stairs, deciding that he was going to go get a drink before taking the long walk home.

“HEY R, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”  He turned to see Courfeyrac standing on the landing with his hands cupped around his mouth.

“SOMEWHERE THAT DOESN’T HAVE THAT PILE OF CRAP PLAYING.”

“HOW DARE YOU INSULT SPACE JAM.”

“HOW DARE YOU LEAD ME ON WITH PROMISES OF LEGALLY BLONDE.”

“DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES.”

Grantaire flipped him the bird and headed for the door.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Courfeyrac.”

“Love you too, R.”

Grantaire let the door cut off Courfeyrac’s laughter and headed out towards the nearest store that sold alcohol.  He was going to get just drunk enough to work up the motivation to walk past the park again so he could make it home at a decent time.  Or not, even tipsy he still hated walking by that park.  Maybe he’d just crash at someone else’s place…

He somehow managed to drag himself home that night, and then drag himself out of bed the next morning.  Then he looked over his missed text messages and decided to drag himself over to Bahorel’s place to mooch some pancakes or cereal.  He pulled on a coat and whistled obnoxiously on his way there.  Bahorel was one of the few friends who happened to live in the opposite direction of the dreaded park with its terrifying inhabitants. 

In the light of day he felt a little silly for being so scared of the park.  Really, why couldn’t he have _normal_ irrational fears?

_Don’t be stupid, if it were normal then it wouldn’t be irrational._

Of course, if he could just be afraid of things like heights or spiders like a normal person he wouldn’t be having this problem.

_People don’t choose their phobias, numbnuts.  You should just man up and accept that this problem isn’t going to go away._

Or he could ignore the rational advice of his conscience and continue acting like he had the situation totally under control.  Yeah, that sounded good.

Bahorel’s place was actually very nice, he rented out half of a duplex with the income from his grown-up lawyering job that he claimed to hate.  None of the Amis were convinced that he actually ever did any work, the popular theory being that he showed up occasionally and the company continued to pay him.  Whatever the case, he earned enough to live in a place that was an entire staircase up from Grantaire’s piece of crap flat and had enough leftover money to keep his fridge filled with good (or at least edible) food.

Grantaire bounded up to the front stoop and walked right into the front hall.  Bahorel hadn’t locked his door again.  He probably didn’t need to, being a hulking 6’3” giant who boxed regularly, but it still annoyed the hell out of most of his friends.  He had the second nicest tv between them all, and if that got stolen they’d have to use Marius and Courf’s place for any big group movie nights.

The house was quiet except for the faint sound of someone humming from the direction of the kitchen.  Grantaire sniffed the air and grinned.  Bingo.  It was a pancake morning.  He swooped into the kitchen and plopped onto one of the barstools.

“One order of pancakes, waiter, and make it snappy.  I’m a busy man with places to be.”

Bahorel didn’t even look over his shoulder before making a rude gesture with the spatula.

“Make your own damn pancakes, you mooch.”

R laughed and tried to snag one off the plate that was full of prepared pancakes.  “Take pity on a starving man, you’re supposed to be a defender of the people.”

“Not before twelve o’clock I’m not.  Right now I’m a defender of my right to eat my own breakfast.”  Bahorel slapped the thieving hand away and flipped the final pancake off the griddle and onto his plate.  He moved himself to one of the barstools and watched as Grantaire used the leftover batter to make himself his own breakfast.

“This one,” Grantaire announced gravely, “Will be shaped like a heart.  It will be a symbol of my love for your fantastic pancake batter.”

“Unlike _some_ people I don’t bother with that shitty boxed stuff.  If you weren’t such a cheapskate you could have pancakes as good as mine.”

“Excuse you, I am a professional cheapskate.  We miserly people do not change our ways for anything so simple as a breakfast food.”

At that moment Bahorel’s shirt pocket chose to emit a soft peeping.  Grantaire froze.

“What’s making that sound?”

“Oh,” Bahorel looked down into the pocket.  “He’s woken up.”

“Bahorel, what’s in your pocket?”

“Are you hungry?” cooed the brawny man to the lump in his shirt pocket.  “Do you need breakfast too?”  There was another series of peeps from the pocket.

“ _Bahorel_.  What’s.  Making.  That.  Sound?”

“You okay R?  It’s just Archibald.  Here,” Bahorel scooped up the offending lump and put it down on the counter.

Grantaire let out an embarrassingly loud shriek and dropped the spatula.  He bolted for the door and was out on the sidewalk, hightailing it away from there faster than you could say ‘life’s a bitch’.

Bahorel looked down at the duckling on the counter.  He looked back to where the heart-shaped pancake was slowly burning on the griddle.  He stood up and walked over the phone.

“Hey, Combeferre?  It’s Bahorel.  Yeah.  I know it’s a little early.  Listen, do you know if Grantaire has some weird phobia of baby animals?  What?  No, I just introduced him to Archibald.  Uh-huh.  Yeah.  Well he _was_ here but I think he’s about halfway to the county line by now.  Okay.  No, I’ll do that.  Thanks.  Bye.”

Somewhere across town, Grantaire received a phone call.  He ignored it.  The world was no longer a safe place.  One of his best friends had turned against him.  He stopped only once, at a gas station to buy a carton of milk and some instant ramen.  If there were no safe places left he would retreat to his own domain.  He speed-walked to his apartment and deadlocked the door.  He’d be fine here.

Grantaire woke up to a ferocious knocking.  The pounding at the door echoed the pounding of his heart as he shot up, startled out of his nap.  He checked the clock, 4:32 PM.  The knocking did not decrease in tempo or amplitude.  He groaned and rolled off the couch.

“GET YOUR LAZY ASS UP AND TELL US THAT YOU’RE STILL ALIVE.”  Grantaire winched.  He seemed to have accidently befriended the loudest group of people possible.

“I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, R.  GET OVER HERE AND ANSWER THE DOOR.”

He stepped over a couple of moldering socks and an empty Captain Crunch box.  The door was awfully far away, maybe his visitor would just give up and leave?

“GRANTAIRE.  DOOR.  NOW.”

No such luck.  He slid back the lock and swung the door open.  Éponine pushed her way into his apartment, dragging a nervous looking Marius with her.

“Christ, Éponine, could you be any louder?”

“Hell no.  No one’s heard from you in three days.  What the fuck were you thinking?  Bahorel’s been alternating between worried sick and telling everyone that as your lawyer he gets first dibs on all your stuff after you starve to death in here.”  She grimaced at the mess of bottles and dirty dishes on the coffee table and flopped down on his sofa.  Marius hovered awkwardly in the doorway.

“It’s nice that you’re okay,” he offered.  “I think everyone was thrown off by your, um, disappearance.”

“Thanks Pontmercy, you can be sure to tell them that I’m doing fine and that they didn’t need to send in the human battering ram.”  He directed a pointed glare at Éponine who ignored him and propped her feet up in a position similar to the one he’d been sleeping in a few minutes previously.

“Let’s get this intervention underway, shall we?  Marius, have you got your notecards?”

“Y-yeah.”  He fumbled for his pocket and managed to pull out a couple crumpled 3-by-5 notecards.  “Ahem, first point.  You’re a fu-flipping moron.”  He hastily censored whatever was written on the card and the tips of his ears turned red.

“Éponine, do I have to read them all?”

“That’s what the doctor ordered, isn’t’ it?”  She’d pulled her phone out and was casually flipping through her photos.  With a wave of her hand Marius started to read again.

“Second point.  There are people who care about your s-sorry ass.”  He looked over at Grantaire to see if he’d been paying attention.  He’d been distracted by Éponine, who’d waved his attention over to whatever she was looking at on her phone.

“Yeah it’s cute, I don’t know why you’re showing me a picture of a baby rabbit though.” 

Marius cleared his throat and Grantaire looked back over to him.  “Sorry Marius, keep going.”

“Third point.  You have to pay your own rent and if you never leave your apartment then you won’t be able to make money to keep living there.  Nobody else wants to live in that deathtrap so you should do the public a favor and get back to your job so you can continue be the only person crazy enough to want to sleep there.”

“R, check out these kittens, aren’t they great?”

“Éponine, I know for a fact you don’t give a shit.  Why are you showing me this?”

“Fourth point.  Um, I’m not really sure what this says.  I think Courfeyrac wrote it but I can’t make out his handwriting…”

“What kind of puppies do you think these are?”

“Why do you even care?”

“I don’t, just thought you might like to look at them.”

“Sixth point.  No, wait, that’s not right.  Where did point five go?”  Marius shuffled through his cards, dropping several of them in his attempt to locate the missing point.

“Here,” Éponine said, holding a card out.  “I wrote that one.”  Marius took it and scanned over it quickly.

“Ép,” he said in a slightly strangled voice, “I can’t read this one.”

“Man up, Marius.”  She flicked absentmindedly through a series of pictures.  Marius turned red and cleared his throat again.

“Point five.  If you stay home like the d-dumbass you are then you’ll never get to make sweet love to- Éponine do I really have to read this out loud?“

“Hold that thought.  Hey R, tell me what you think of this one.”  She angled her phone towards Grantaire and he let out a strangled yelp and jerked backwards.

“Gotcha!”  Éponine leaped off the couch and pumped her fist in the air.  “Up top, Pontmercy.  Mission accomplished!”  Marius gingerly high-fived her.  Grantaire stepped backwards as she came towards him, her phone in hand with the offending picture still on screen.

“For the love of god, change the fucking picture Éponine.”

“Why Grantaire, afraid of a little duck are we?”

“Hell yes, now get that monster out of my face.”  She laughed and handed it over to a bewildered Marius.

“…Why are you scaring Grantaire with a picture of a duckling?”

“Because ducks are the fucking anti-Christ all right?  And Éponine is second in command I swear.”  He’d backed into the wall and slid to the ground.  Éponine’s chuckles had gained momentum until she joined him on the floor, rocking back and forth from her gravelly belly laugh.  Marius continued to look more and more baffled as she became more and more helpless with laughter.

“Stop laughing, it’s not funny.  I really hate ducks okay?”

“Is…that why you’ve been hiding in here?”

“I’m not safe anywhere now that Bahorel’s got that stupid, fuzzy lump of evil.  He surprised me, no one mentioned that he was harboring devil-spawn in his house.”  Grantaire glared at Éponine who was laughing so hard she’d ceased to make noise and was just issuing little wheezing sounds.  “Fuck you, Thénardier.  My stupid duck phobia is a serious issue, okay?”

Marius furrowed his brow.  “Is that all the problem was?  I thought it was going to be much more, um, problematic.  Can’t you just ask Bahorel to leave Archibald at home?”

“And tell him that I piss myself every time I see one of those freaky things?  He’d never let me live it down.”

Éponine managed to raise herself up off the carpet.  “Hold on, I’ve got a question.  Is this,” snort, giggle “duck phobia why you never walk through the park anymore?  Because there’s a duck pond?”  Grantaire flipped her off and she let out a howl and collapsed again.

“Is that why you didn’t want to watch Space Jam a couple days ago?”  Marius’ eyes widened with sudden understanding.  “You’re afraid of ducks so you can’t watch Looney Tunes!”  Grantaire turned his glare to him.  Marius winced a little but pressed on.  “Didn’t you ever have a rubber ducky as a kid?”

“Pontmercy if you don’t shut up right now I’m going to shove Éponine’s phone down your throat.”

At that moment the aforementioned phone began to ring.  The chorus of  ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ played until Éponine managed to swipe her thumb across the screen.  She pressed speaker so Marius and Grantaire could hear whoever was calling.

“Éponine?”  Combeferre’s voice sounded weird, half muffled by a stray sock.  Éponine only laughed harder, her giggling wracking her entire body.

“Éponine, are you okay?”  Grantaire snatched the phone off the floor before Marius could get to it.

“She’s fine, just busy being the world’s biggest asshole.”

“Grantaire, it’s nice to hear from you.  How are you doing?”

“I’m _fine_ , unlike some people seem to believe.  How soon can you come collect the Scooby-Doo gang from my place?  If they don’t get out of here soon you’ll have to find someone to investigate _their_ disappearances.”

“I’m sorry to hear that they were bothering you.  We were worried about you though, I’m sure you can imagine that we thought a little invasion of your privacy would be a fair trade for reassurance of your continued existence.”  Grantaire drew breath to deliver a retort but Marius beat him to it, leaning over his shoulder and yelling.

“We found out what’s wrong with Grantaire!  Combeferre, he’s afr- ow!  That’s my foot-!“

“Well if you’d back off-!“

“I’m supposed to report back-“

“-don’t need the whole world knowing about my-“

“-if you’d just give me the phone-“

Éponine saw her chance and she took it.  As the two boys grappled for the phone she snatched it from their hands and danced away to safer territory.

_“Grantairehasacripplingfearofducks!”_

“…Éponine you’re going to have to repeat yourself.  I didn’t get any of that.”  Éponine smiled the awful smile of someone who had just witnessed the brutal defeat of their enemy as she made eye contact with Grantaire.

“R is terrified of ducks.”

There was silence from the other end of the line.  Grantaire seized his chance and reclaimed the mobile device.

“Everyone has irrational fears all right, it’s not that weird, Combeferre, _are you laughing?”_

“Ah, no.  That would be Courfeyrac.  And Joly.  You were on speaker phone.”

Grantaire dropped the phone and groaned, burying his head in his hands.  He had the worst friends.

Marius patted him tentatively on the back as Éponine finally pulled herself together and started to give a full report to the members of the Amis who were gathered at the other end of the line.

“I’m sure they’ll understand.  Remember when Enjolras told Jehan he didn’t now how to make a bed?”

“They still haven’t let that go and it happened _two years ago_.”

“Oh.  Well at least you won’t have to worry about Bahorel bringing Archibald to meetings?”

Grantaire groaned again and buried his face in the carpet.  He was never going to live this down.


End file.
